Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book illustrates the potential of eclectic assessments of contemporary socio-cultural complexity; the relevance of combining insights gained through a variety of qualitative and quantitative quests that ranges from content-analysis and semiotics, to social network analysis and extensive ethnography. Emilia Bacharach's explores the ways in which individuals belonging to the Vallabh Sampraday, a Vaishnav sectarian community based in western India, negotiate between religious and social values inherited from their traditions past and everyday life in the present via the Internet. The Indian administrative conceptualisation of its diaspora differentiates between Person of Indian Origin (PIO) and Non-resident Indians (NRI). Jeffrey Juris (2008), in his investigation of anti-corporate globalisation movements, vividly depicts the functioning of the cellular forms. He explains the fundamental changes in today's practice of politics in terms of emergent cultural politics of networking.